Saturday, June 30, 2012

In my last post, I presented a general theory of value and claimed that all value-laden terms can be represented by that theory.

In this post, I wish to put that into practice by applying the general concept of value to the specific concepts of illness and injury.

According to the general theory of value, all value exists as a relationship between states of affairs (objects of evaluation) and desires.

A desire is a propositional attitude. A “desire that P” gives
a person a motivating reason to bring about states of affairs in which the
proposition “P” is true. All value-laden claims are claims about what people have a reason to realize or to avoid. Consequently, all value-laden terms
capable of being true describe a relationship between the object of evaluation and some set of desires that answers the following four questions:

• What is this term used to evaluate?

• What desires are relevant in making this evaluation?

• Does the object of evaluation objectively satisfy or
dissatisfy the relevant desires?

• Does the object of evaluation objectively
satisfy or dissatisfy desires directly or indirectly or both?

Here, I wish to apply this general theory to the concepts of
“illness” and “injury”.

Nothing counts as an illness or an injury unless it is bad in
some sense. In other words, they are necessarily things that people have reason
to avoid. This fact is built into the very meaning of the terms. The general
theory of value on which desirism is built handles
these concepts as follows:

(1) What are the objects of evaluation for this term?

Ultimately, they are used to evaluate changes in physical and
mental functioning – or deviations from the norm with respect to physical and
mental functioning - depending on whether we are talking about physical or
mental illness or injury.

More specifically, an injury is a change or deviation in
physical or mental functioning that is brought about by a macro cause - a cause
that can be seen. Whereas an illness is a change or deviation in physical and
mental functioning brought about by a micro cause – a cause that is invisible
such as a bacteria or a genetic disorder. Consequently, if a person gets
trampled by a horse that breaks the person’s leg, the person has been injured.
If the person gets bitten by a mosquito and gets malaria, then that person has
gotten sick – has acquired an illness.

(2) What desires are relevant in evaluating these objects of evaluation?

There is a tendency to evaluate changes or deviations in
physical and mental functioning relative to the desires the people commonly
have. Consequently, a person may be considered sick if he acquires some change
in mental functioning that people generally have reason to avoid. However, it is
generally difficult to maintain a lot of the implications that come from an
illness or an injury claim by sticking to this definition. Under this
definition, a person can be injured or sick and have actually no reason to get
better. This is the case when the person’s own desires differ from those that
people generally have. When we say that a person is sick or injured, we
generally mean that the person herself has a reason to avoid or to get out of
that state (even if that person does not realize it).

Consequently, it makes more sense to say that illness and
injury evaluate changes in physical and mental functioning relative to the
desires of the agent. They are changes in functioning, whether by a macro cause
or a micro cause, that the agent herself has reason to avoid. This is the only
way to support the implication that the person in question has a reason to avoid
the illness or injury. We could use a term that defines illness or injury
according to what most people want. However, if we went this route, we would not
be able to tell from the mere fact that a person has gotten sick or being
injured that something bad (something that he had reason to avoid) had happened
to him.

(3) Are the relevant desires objectively satisfied or dissatisfied by the object of evaluation?

It is built into the very definition of the terms “illness”
or “injury” that whatever they are, they tend to thwart the desires of the
people who have them. Thus, the people who have them have a reason to get
themselves out of that state (whether they are able to or not). It is in this
sense that illnesses and injuries are necessarily bad.

(4) Are the relevant desires objectively satisfied or dissatisfied directly or indirectly by the object of evaluation?

In the case of an illness or injury, it does not matter
whether the change or deviation in physical or mental functioning objectively
dissatisfies desires directly or indirectly. Both types of relationships are
relevant.

An illness or injury might be thwart desires directly simply
by being uncomfortable. A throbbing pain or a persistent cough can simply be
unpleasant, and directly give those who have it a reason to want to be rid of
it.

Or, an illness or injury might thwart desires indirectly.
Blindness and deafness make it the case that the agent has no access to
potentially useful information. An amputated arm will make it difficult to
perform any number of tasks – thus thwarting desires that one would have
otherwise been able to fulfill. The concepts of “illness” and “injury” do not
care about whether the thwarting of desires is direct or indirectly, only that
the object of evaluation is responsible for thwarting (or preventing the
objective satisfaction of) desires.

Application: Is homosexual desire a mental illness?

Using this model, we can then answer questions such as
whether homosexuality is an illness.

Somebody who believes in the existence of intrinsic values or
of reasons for action that exist independent of desires might wrongly conclude
that homosexuality is an illness. However, these conclusions are grounded on
false premises. The only values that exist are desires – they provide the only
reasons for action in the universe (that we know of).

Homosexual desire has the same tendency to thwart other
desires as heterosexual desire. Perhaps less, given that heterosexual desire
creates a risk of unwanted pregnancies that rarely comes from satisfying
homosexual desires. However, we clearly cannot say the same thing about
incestuous desires or sexual desires involving children – both of which tend to
thwart a great many desires.

Since we can know the relationship between homosexual desires
and other desires as a matter of fact, we can know whether homosexuality is an
illness as a matter of fact. We can also know whether people generally have many
and strong reasons to promote or inhibit homosexual desire as a matter of fact –
or if they <i>thinki> they do – a fact about which people can be and many
are in fact mistaken.

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About Me

When I was in high school, I decided that I wanted to leave the world better off than it would have been if I had not existed. This started a quest, through 12 years of college and on to today, to try to discover what a "better" world consists of. I have written a book describing that journey that you can find on my website. In this blog, I will keep track of the issues I have confronted since then.